Unisys Corporation has introduced new ClearPath Dorado and ClearPath Libra 800 Series which feature improvements to handle customers' growing mission-critical workloads. The new offerings feature more powerful processors and I/O capabilities, as well as enhancements to the ClearPath software operating environments - such as support for Apple iPad tablets and Android and BlackBerry smartphones - are key elements of the new offerings.

About 100 attendees traveled to the UNITE 2011 Technology Conference and Exhibition, which was held last month at the Hyatt Regency Orange County in Garden Grove, California. Highlights included a keynote by Ann Thureen, Unisys vice president of engineering and supply chain technology and infrastructure services, and Wayne Carpenter, Unisys vice president of sales, application modernization, and North American technology. Thureen and Carpenter laid out the long-term strategy for the ClearPath product line, which is an important topic for customers who have made significant investment in the technology, Jim Shelton, UNITE board chairman, tells 5 Minute Briefing. In addition, Unisys CEO Ed Coleman stopped by the conference and spoke for about 15 minutes, emphasizing the importance of users and customers as well as the value UNITE as an organization provides.

Compuware Corporation announced a new release of its integrated application performance management (APM) solution, the Compuware Gomez platform. This release introduces solutions designed to help companies optimize mobile and web application performance across the application delivery chain, from data centers, through the cloud, to the edge of the internet.

Sepaton, a provider of enterprise-class disk-based data protection platforms, announced the extension of its enterprise data protection platform. The company's Sepaton S2100-DS3 Series 1000 and 2000 systems are designed to meet the needs of large enterprises with multiple remote locations, the DS3 provides enterprises the ability to deliver the same standard of data protection to remote offices that has previously only been available to primary data centers.

CA Technologies says it is working to help IT organizations and employees meet workforce needs and address sustainability challenges with core programming skills training offered through its Mainframe Academy and Mainframe Associate Software Engineering Program (MASEP). The training is necessary to support customers who rely on the mainframe as a critical component of their data centers, according to CA. The goal of the Mainframe Academy and MASEP is to certify graduates in the mastery of mainframe skills across hardware, applications and environments.

Red Hat, a provider of open-source-based platforms, announced the availability of the beta version of the seventh update for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. This beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (version 5.7) contains a number of enhancements for enterprise management and virtualization performance. Also included are updates to the drivers and kernel to support Intel, AMD, POWER and IBM mainframe hardware updates.

Temenos, a provider of banking software, launched a new Java and component-based version of its flagship TEMENOS T24 software (T24), designed for use by large banks. As part of this launch, Temenos announced results of a major benchmark which illustrate the high performance of the new product running natively on IBM' System z servers, leveraging advanced features of the System z.

Maintec Technologies, an infrastructure support vendor, has launched a service it calls "Graveyard Shift Service," which offers companies running IBM mainframe data centers capability to outsource their night shift operations to be supported from Maintec's Bangalore-based Network Operations center.

The Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 and X2-8 with the Solaris option began shipping just this month. Now in its third generation, the Database Machine combines all the components to create what the company describes as the best platform for running the Oracle Database. Here, Tim Shetler, vice president of Product Management, Oracle, talks about the performance innovations that differentiate Oracle's offering, how customers are using the system today for business advantage, and also — what's ahead.

HP has announced a new financing offer to help organizations accelerate decision making with SAP In-Memory Appliance software (SAP HANA) running on HP Converged Infrastructure. The financing program from HP includes HP infrastructure and services as well as SAP HANA software licenses.

The service management world of today is all about linking business services to the underlying IT infrastructure, creating an effective bridge between the business and technology. In theory, this provides a clear window into the IT environment to increase accountability, productivity and efficiency. Effective service management also provides business context, so IT can take action to avert service-impacting events by understanding business priority. However, current business service management (BSM) does not provide enough guidance about how to manage services proactively and effectively. This issue is now more important than ever, because on the horizon lurks an exciting new arena for service management-virtualization and cloud computing.

The Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 and X2-8 with the Solaris option began shipping just this month. Now in its third generation, the Database Machine combines all the components to create what the company describes as the best platform for running the Oracle Database. Here, Tim Shetler, vice president of Product Management, Oracle, talks about the performance innovations that differentiate Oracle's offering, how customers are using the system today for business advantage, and also — what's ahead.

Informatica Corporation has announced Informatica Cloud Summer 2011, a major new release of its cloud integration service. The Informatica Cloud Summer 2011 release enables universal cloud integration and unified hybrid deployment for both on-premise and cloud deployments. The new release provides ease of use cloud features to enhance the simplicity of learning, deploying, administering, managing and configuring cloud integration, as well as enterprise-class functionality, including fine-grained access controls and delegated administration.

SHARE's recent study of 376 IT employers shatters a lot of conventional wisdom about what IT employers are looking for in college graduates. One of the key points to come out of the study is the insatiable demand for basic mainframe skills.

LogLogic, an IT data management company supporting log and security management, says it is working with VMware to help ensure that IT data is collected from virtualized infrastructures, to meet the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). To help VMware customers achieve regulatory compliance faster, LogLogic also announced it is awarding its MX-Virtual virtual appliance product to the first 100 VMware vShield and VMware vCenter Server customers who sign up at www.loglogic.com/vmware-offer.

Red Hat, Inc., a provider of enterprise open source solutions, announced the launch of JBoss Enterprise Data Grid 6, a cloud-ready, highly scalable distributed data cache, which can help ease the load on database servers, reduce response times in applications, and provide additional failure resilience. JBoss Enterprise Data Grid 6 is based on the popular JBoss Community project, Infinispan, and will initially be available through an Early Access Program.

H&W Computer Systems, Inc., a mainframe software vendor, announced it is shipping a new update to its SYSB-II software, which enables customers to keep mainframe CICS applications online while batch updates VSAM files. Version 6.4 of SYSB-II includes performance enhancements gained from features designed to avoid unnecessary update locking, optimize use of read-ahead buffer space, and take advantage of syncpoint optimization.

DataKinetics, a provider of mainframe transaction and performance solutions, announced a solution designed to increase mainframe data capacity and throughput while decreasing data access request time for DB2. The Java to DB2 Optimizer, initially developed by DataKinetics to solve Java to DB2 access issues in the mainframe of a large U.S. bank, helps minimize DB2 processing loads, first by reducing the number of I/Os to DB2 for read-only data, and replacing dynamic SQL queries with stored procedures.

IBM announced seven new tape storage and enhanced archiving, deduplication offerings designed to help clients efficiently store and extract intelligence from massive amounts of data. The announcements include a tape library system that provides more than 2.7 exabytes of automated storage.

Compuware Corporation, a provider of technology performance solutions, announced that American Express won the $1 million grand prize in its "Mainframe Cost Savings Program." Participants in the program were offered a free cost-savings assessment, which identified current opportunities and provided a roadmap for future operational cost-savings for the mainframe.

Gluster, a provider of open source cloud storage solutions, announced the availability of the Gluster Storage Software Appliance, intended to extend the range of commercially supported configurations for Gluster in the private cloud and on-premise data center environments. This new product combines Red Hat CentOS and GlusterFS and can be deployed on any Red Hat Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) certified host server and its certified storage.

Informatica Corporation has announced Informatica Cloud Summer 2011, a major new release of its cloud integration service. The Informatica Cloud Summer 2011 release enables universal cloud integration and unified hybrid deployment for both on-premise and cloud deployments. The new release provides ease of use cloud features to enhance the simplicity of learning, deploying, administering, managing and configuring cloud integration, as well as enterprise-class functionality, including fine-grained access controls and delegated administration.

Big data provides new opportunities to improve customer care, unearth business insights, control operational costs, and in some cases, enable entirely new business models. By having access to larger and broader data sets, you can improve forecasts and projections for the business. A healthcare organization can conduct longitudinal analysis against years of data for patients treated with coronary attacks in order to improve care and speed time to recovery. A retailer can conduct deeper analysis on buying behavior during recessionary times if they have access to large data sets collected during the last economic downturn. Additionally, organizations across many sectors, such as communications, financial services and utilities, face significant regulatory and legal requirements for retaining and providing fast access to historical data for inquiries, audits and reporting.

North American businesses are collectively losing $26.5 billion in revenue each year as a result of slow recovery from IT system downtime, according to a recent study. To protect against unexpected outages, IT organizations attempt to prepare by creating redundant backup systems, duplicating every layer in their existing infrastructure and preparing elaborate disaster recovery processes. This approach is expensive and only partly effective, as demonstrated by the string of notable outages, and can be seen, at best, as a way to minimize downtime. Major social networking companies, such as Google and Facebook, have figured out how to scale ut application stacks rather than scale up vertically.

Oracle has announced Sun Ray Software 5.2. The latest release of Oracle's server-hosted desktop software is intended to be simpler to install and configure, and features improved video, audio, smart card, Virtual Private Network (VPN), and network resiliency. Sun Ray Software is part of Oracle's desktop-to-data center virtualization portfolio, enabling customers to virtualize and manage their full software and hardware stack, from applications to disk.

Unisys CEO Ed Coleman is planning to attend the upcoming UNITE 2011 Technology Conference and Exhibition. Coleman is scheduled to give a short address at the opening general session prior to the keynote, which will be presented by Ann Thureen, Unisys vice president of engineering and supply chain technology and infrastructure services, and Wayne Carpenter, Unisys vice president of sales, application modernization, and North American technology on Monday, May 23. And, after that session, Coleman will be available in the foyers and on the exhibit floor for attendees to meet with and have informal ad hoc discussions. This year's conference will take place May 22-25 at the Hyatt Regency Orange County in Garden Grove, California.

Unisys has announced that the ES7000 Model 7600R G3 Enterprise Server, the new high-end model in ES family of open servers based on the Intel x86 processor architecture, are scheduled to start shipping in June 2011.

The Unisys Stealth Solution for Networks has achieved EAL-4+ certification from the National Security Agency (NSA) as a secure solution for protection of data-in-motion across any network, whether private or public, qualifying Stealth to protect U.S. Defense Department data classified up to the "secret" level. The patent-pending Unisys Stealth Solution uses advanced data encryption to secure data on shared networks. Using the Unisys Stealth Solution, organizations can create defined communities of interest within a shared network and segregate data access so that one group of users cannot see or access another's data.

The Unisys Data Center Transformation Technology Talk webinar series continues this month, featuring an update on Unisys' latest Data Center Transformation and Cloud services and solution offerings to better assist customers in aligning their IT infrastructure more successfully with their business goals. Unisys is highlighting a different storage service and solution topic each month in addition to regular updates on DCT services and ES server technology solutions.